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Showing posts with label Blockchain phone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blockchain phone. Show all posts
They say that everyone has at least one brilliant idea; it’s just that most people never do anything with it. It’s one thing to have a eureka moment, but implementing it requires time, effort, and capital. Thanks to the advent of ICOs, at least one of those problems has now been solved. Almost half of this year’s crypto projects launched their ICO with little more than a white paper and an idea.
Crowdfund First, Code Later
It’s no secret that many ICOs launch without an MVP in place, or that many have simply hired a developer to create the smart contract for their token. Recruiting developers and writing code costs money after all, and money’s hard to come without an ICO, hence the eagerness to crowdfund first and code later. New research by ICO Rating shows the prevalence of this trend among crypto projects. Their market research report reveals that 46% of the ICOs that launched in Q1 of 2018 did so with zero development.
Just 26% had an MVP in place, and 15.5% had an alpha release ready at the time of their ICO. It’s become commonplace for projects, especially those working on blockchain infrastructure, to launch with just a roadmap and whitepaper as an ERC20 token before initiating a token swap once their mainnet is ready several months down the line. The difficulty for investors, trying to scrutinize these projects, is that they must trust the claims of throughput and other performance-based metrics, since there is no way of verifying them.
Investors See Diminishing Returns
ICO Rating’s Q1 data also shows that the median return on tokens has fallen more than 10% compared to Q4 of 2017, and now sits at 49%. In addition, only 21% of this year’s tokens have been listed on exchanges so far, versus 33% for the previous period. Perhaps the most telling statistic that demonstrates the difficulty investors have had in turning a profit is the fact that 83% of tokens listed in Q1 traded below their ICO price.
Data shows the sectors where crypto funds are invested
A final finding of interest from ICO Rating concerns crypto funds. These have proliferated over the past 18 months, with a string of major investors from the worlds of VC and traditional finance entering the space. These funds tend to enter the market with great fanfare, but have a tendency to leave with a whimper. ICO Rating notes that only 119 of the 219 crypto funds it analyzed are actively operating, and nine funds closed in the first quarter of this year including Crowd Crypto Fund and Alpha Protocol.
They opine: “We expect that more funds may be closed in the future, due either to inefficiency or legal problems with regulators.” Nevertheless, with the remaining funds overseeing almost $28 billion in assets, crypto funds are big business.
What’s your opinion of ICOs that launch without any code or an MVP? Let us know in the comments section below.
We're expecting a more conventional flagship phone launch from HTC in the next few weeks, but in the meantime it has announced a blockchain-based handset called Exodus. The company says the focus of the phone will be security, encryption, and cryptocurrency support.
Blockchain is one of the hottest terms in tech right now, though you'd be forgiven for getting confused about exactly what it means. In simple terms, it's a log of transactions – the transactions are the blocks, and the ledger is the chain. It can be public (available to the world at large) or private (available to a select group).
The idea is that security and transparency are increased by having a blockchain, so it's harder to commit fraud: Changing one block immediately brings up errors in the adjoining blocks, for example. Importantly, the system is also decentralized, so it's not located in any one specific place or owned by one entity.
The technology was created to underpin Bitcoin, but has since been put to all kinds of uses, from social networks to board games. The fact that it's available to everyone on a particular network doesn't mean all those people can see what you've been spending your Bitcoin on, but it does mean there's a record of money changing (virtual) hands.
So, how does all this apply to phones? Blockchain technology can be applied anywhere security and decentralization are important, from online shopping to private communications, and HTC is hoping to tap into that.
Each Exodus phone will act as an encrypted node on a blockchain network, making the phone and data stored on it as difficult to break into as it is to tamper with a Bitcoin block (very difficult, in other words).
The phone will also run what HTC is calling "DApps", decentralized applications also based on blockchain technology, with their own public ledgers. Information from these apps will be verified by users on the network, with cryptocurrency rewards in Bitcoin and Ethereum available (both cryptocurrencies will be tightly integrated into Exodus phones).
"Our vision is to expand the blockchain ecosystem by creating the world's first phone dedicated to decentralized applications and security," says HTC. "With the release of the HTC Exodus we can now make this a reality."
All we know so far is that the phone will run Android, have a touchscreen and a single rear camera, and support a SIM and a microSD card. As yet there's no news on when the phone will actually appear or how much it will cost, though you will be able to buy one with your cryptocurrency stash when the time comes.
Blockchain (and Bitcoin) are very much nascent technologies right now, full of promise and potential but still some way from mainstream adoption. Only time will tell if the HTC Exodus ends up being another step towards blockchain reaching the masses.
It’s no secret that many ICOs launch without an MVP in place, or that many have simply hired a developer to create the smart contract for their token. Recruiting developers and writing code costs money after all, and money’s hard to come without an ICO, hence the eagerness to crowdfund first and code later. New research by ICO Rating shows the prevalence of this trend among crypto projects. Their market research report reveals that 46% of the ICOs that launched in Q1 of 2018 did so with zero development.
Just 26% had an MVP in place, and 15.5% had an alpha release ready at the time of their ICO. It’s become commonplace for projects, especially those working on blockchain infrastructure, to launch with just a roadmap and whitepaper as an ERC20 token before initiating a token swap once their mainnet is ready several months down the line. The difficulty for investors, trying to scrutinize these projects, is that they must trust the claims of throughput and other performance-based metrics, since there is no way of verifying them.
